It depends on the way you want your team to play, I think our team sums that up perfectly.
Paulo and Lussick are completely different locks, Lussick will do the dirty work, Paulo will do more of the ball playing.
If Paulo is our lock then there is a bit of difference between prop and lock.
If Lussick plays lock, there is much difference at all.
Lussick you will find is probably a bit fitter then the other props so can get more minutes out of him.
This is why I think 'lock' is a completely useless term these days. Joe Paulo plays a different role to Anthony Watmough, and both play a different role to Merrin or Burgess.
When Lussick plays 'lock' he is playing front row. He might get more minutes and make less runs per minute but he does the same thing as when he plays prop. But how's this, he has played two game this year - in jersey 16 and jersey 17, and played half a game each time.
He came off the bench in the first game (vs Warriors) and he and Terepo both played 38 minutes, replacing Mannah and Moimoi who both played 42 minutes. Lussick was playing prop against the Warriors, for about half a game.
In round two he started against Easts (named in jersey 17) but only played 40 minutes. The other two starting props played 48 and 46 minutes. These three were replaced by Joe Paulo (50 minutes), Allgood (34 minutes) and Terepo (28 minutes). The other bench forward - Tanginoa - played 27 minutes.
During this game the five 'props' made this many runs:
Mannah 10 runs (one every 4.8 minutes)
Allgood 6 runs (one every 5.7 minutes)
Moimoi 8 runs (one every 5.8 minutes)
Terepo 4 runs (one every 7 minutes)
Lussick 5 runs (one every 8 minutes)
So clearly Lussick wasn't playing the same role as Mannah, Allgood or Moimoi, but he looked to be playing a similar role to Terepo. Lussick touched the ball eight times for five runs, whereas Terepo ran the ball on every touch. Terepo also had one offload - Paulo (2 offloads), and Mannah (1 offload) were the only forwards to offload the ball.
So Lussick passed the ball three times before the line, and on five occasions he ran the ball. Terepo ran it every time, so these two were playing different roles as well.
Joe Paulo touched the ball 28 times in his 50 minutes (Lussick's 8 touches were in 40 minutes) but Paulo only ran the ball on eight of those 28 touches. Twenty times he passed before the line. So Paulo and Lussick were playing different roles as well.
One thing is for sure, 'prop' and 'lock' are mostly redundant terms, especially when it comes to these in-between type players such as Terepo and Lussick. And with how much more involved Paulo is than Lussick or Terepo (or any other 'lock' bar Sutton), 'lock' isn't a suitable description for Paulo's position either.
Interestingly, Lussick's two performances this year have featured starkly different levels of involvement, although the results in the two games were very different as well, so it' hard to judge what is due to the different gameplan and what is just down to having no possession in week two.
Lussick
Round one: 38 minutes, 14 touches, 14 runs
Round two: 40 minutes, 8 touches, 5 runs
Ideally I would compare Lussick's stats for round one against the other tight forwards in that game, but I just couldn't be arsed. What is clear though is that in round one he was genuinely playing the position we all think of as prop, whereas in round two he wasn't. I expect his involvement stats will be more like round one this week than round two, and hopefully the result will be similar too.
Actually of course I could be bothered. Here they are (compare this with the 'prop' stats for round two, earlier in this post):
Lussick 38 minutes 14 runs (one every 2.7 minutes)
Mannah 42 minutes 14 runs (one every 3 minutes)
Moimoi 42 minutes 10 runs (one every 4.2 minutes)
Terepo 38 minutes 6 runs (one every 6.3 minutes)
I put it to you that Terepo played as an extra 'lock' while he was on, with Lussick playing as the only genuine 'prop'. Terepo's involvement is similarly low in some other games he has played. His best involvement was one run every 3.7 minutes against Penrith and one per 3.8 minutes against Manly - both reasonably 'prop-like' involvement figures. However in the single game he started - against Brisbane - he only averaged one run every 5 minutes. This is compared to Junior Paulo (one run every 2.6 minutes) and Tim Mannah (one every 3.1 minutes) in the same game.
I reckon a player's involvement - specifically how often they should run the ball - is more about the gameplan than the player's whim. It is also clear that we don't always have two players on the field who are acting as 'props', even if we have three players on the field who are capable of playing such a role. Mostly we have one to take the first hit-up, and two others to support or take the next run as necessary plus defend in the middle with the 'prop' and the hooker. Plus sometimes one of the middle defenders is Joseph Paulo, who plays 'middle half'.
qed
